About

Technology, Thoughts, and Trinkets began as an experimentation; what was it like, as a scholar and civil rights advocate, to make draft thoughts, positions, and ideas public? Since its inception, the site has developed from philosophical musings to directly engaging with critical technical, privacy, and security issues, as well as occasionally reviewing interesting or important books and texts. My experiment has, thus far, turned out incredibly well: I’ve gained considerably more insight into the issues I study than had I kept my thoughts constrained to just the academy. Ultimately the site’s mission continues apace: to maintain a public digital image, while simultaneously creating a hub for my ongoing public projects.

Any ideas or thoughts that I write here should be attributed to me (save for comments made by other participants in this space), and do not necessarily represent the groups I work with or organizations that employ me. No one has compelled me to write any of the text that appears on this site. No sponsors have paid me to write about any of their products.

Credit: Riley Stewart/Munk School of Global Affairs

I received my Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the University of Guelph, and my Ph.D from the University of Victoria. I’m currently the Managing Director of the Telecom Transparency Project and a Senior Research Associate at the Citizen Lab, in the Munk School of Global Affairs with the University of Toronto. My research focuses on third-party access to telecommunications data. My work has been recognized by information and privacy commissioners, Canadian political parties, and national and international non-profits as advancing the state of privacy discourse.

I’ve written policy reports for civil advocacy organizations in Canada, submitted evidence to Parliamentary committees, and am an active member of the Canadian privacy advocacy community. I have also been involved in projects examining lawful access legislation, identity management systems, automatic license plate recognition technologies, access to personal information, network management and surveillance practices in Western democratic states, accountability and transparency regimes for government and corporate surveillance, privacy issues linked to social media services, and the privacy implications of unmanned aerial vehicles.

I’ve published in the Journal of Law, Information & Science, Canadian Journal of Law and Society, European Journal of Law and Technology, Canadian Privacy Law Review, Media and Communication, Business & Society, Internet Policy Review, CTheory, amongst others, and have chapters in numerous academic and popular books. My research has been funded by the Social Sciences and Human Research Council, the New Transparency Project, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner’s contributions programs, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority, and by civil advocacy organizations. I regularly present my research to government, media, the public, and at academic events.

I’m always interested in new challenges and potential consultancy opportunities; feel free to look at LinkedIn profile as well as my academic CV, and contact me if you think I can contribute to your projects as a consultant or an adviser.

Search

Search for:

Canadian SIGINT Summaries

The Canadian SIGINT Summaries includes downloadable copies, along with summary, publication, and original source information, of leaked CSE documents.

Parsons, Christopher. (2015). “Stuck on the Agenda: Drawing lessons from the stagnation of ‘lawful access’ legislation in Canada,” Michael Geist (ed.), Law, Privacy and Surveillance in Canada in the Post-Snowden Era (Ottawa University Press).

Parsons, Christopher. (2015). “Beyond the ATIP: New methods for interrogating state surveillance,” in Jamie Brownlee and Kevin Walby (Eds.), Access to Information and Social Justice (Arbeiter Ring Publishing).

Bennett, Colin, and Parsons, Christopher. (2013). “Privacy and Surveillance: The Multi-Disciplinary Literature on the Capture, Use, and Disclosure of Personal information in Cyberspace” in W. Dutton (Ed.), Oxford Handbook of Internet Studies.

McPhail, Brenda; Parsons, Christopher; Ferenbok, Joseph; Smith, Karen; and Clement, Andrew. (2013). “Identifying Canadians at the Border: ePassports and the 9/11 legacy,” in Canadian Journal of Law and Society 27(3).

Parsons, Christopher; Savirimuthu, Joseph; Wipond, Rob; McArthur, Kevin. (2012). “ANPR: Code and Rhetorics of Compliance,” in European Journal of Law and Technology 3(3).